A Bored Laptop Escapes to Serve a Higher Cause in a Charming Charity Spot

Computers4Africa Film Is Pro Bono Work by JWT Creative

By Alexandra Jardine.Published on Oct 06, 2016

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A laptop makes a bid for freedom in this charming spot written and directed by Miles Bingham, a creative director at JWT London, for charity Computers4Africa.

Narrated by the voice of the computer, the idea is that is that it's desperately bored and depressed by being used for dull Facebook updates ("Just had a cup of tea" and "Just been to the toilet") and turgid celebrity gossip site browsing ("Famous man goes shopping" and "Reality star spotted in reality").

Not feeling that it's fulfilling its real potential, one day it has a kind of breakdown and then plots its escape. Through a frenetic, flickering of images, it brainwashes its owner into rigging up a remote control car to take it to the airport. Then, the laptop sets off for Africa, where we discover, through a snail-mailed photo to the computer's original home, it's seen looking much perkier and looking forward to helping out in a school's double maths lesson. The kids it now hangs out with look pretty jubilant too.

Bingham describes himself as a "passionate supporter" of Computers4Afrrica, a charity that reconditions and sends old computers to Africa to be used in hospitals and schools, and persuaded JWT London to make the ad pro bono. "We spend hours on our computers every day, looking at trivial social updates and celebrity gossip," he said in a statement. "As a creative, I find it extremely rewarding to express my creativity through important projects like this outside of my nine to five. As an industry, we should also strive to persuade audiences to good in some way."